Category Archives: Vault7

Accused Vault7 leaker argues Espionage Act charges are unconstitutional

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A former Central Intelligence Agency employee accused of providing U.S. secrets to WikiLeaks is asking a judge to toss some of the key charges against him, asserting they are unconstitutional. A defense attorney for Joshua Schulte filed a motion on Tuesday asking a judge in the U.S. Southern District of New York to dismiss five charges prosecutors brought against Schulte under the Espionage Act and federal larceny law because they “are unconstitutionally overbroad and void for vagueness.” The Department of Justice charged Schulte in June 2018 in connection with leaking a collection of CIA hacking tools used for cyber-espionage to WikiLeaks, which published much of the data under the name “Vault 7.” Schulte also has been accused of possessing child pornography, smuggling cell phones into his Manhattan jail cell, plotting a disinformation campaign to discredit his accusers and other wrongdoing as part of a years-long legal battle that’s only poised […]

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Alleged CIA leaker’s attorneys now might have to become witnesses

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The bizarre legal wrangling in the case of an accused CIA leaker took another turn this week when lawyers for Joshua Schulte asked the court to appoint new representation in the event the existing attorneys need to testify at trial. Defense attorneys, in an Aug. 26 letter, ask Judge Paul Crotty of the Southern District of New York to divide the case and appoint new counsel over “an ethical issue” in the matter. Schulte was charged last year with allegedly leaking U.S. government secrets to WikiLeaks, eventually resulting in the so-called Vault7 files. Later he was charged with conspiring to leak information from jail. The current moves are associated with those accusations. The attorneys now say Sabrina Schroff, who represents Schulte now, and Matthew Larsen, who previously consulted with Schulte, can testify to the defendant’s mental state before the alleged transmission of classified information from within Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Center. Understanding Schulte’s […]

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A researcher made an elite hacking tool out of the info in the Vault 7 leak

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When WikiLeaks published a cache of more than 8,000 CIA documents in 2017 detailing U.S. hacking capabilities, security experts complained that the organization had possibly produced a technical blueprint on how to recreate the government’s elite-level tools. Wayne Ronaldson has made it a reality. Ronaldson, who looks for corporate clients’ vulnerabilities as “red team” leader at Melbourne-based offensive security company Loop Secure, pored over many of the so-called Vault 7 documents to find the Assassin program. The CIA described Assassin as an automated implant tool capable of monitoring computers running Microsoft Windows for long periods of time without detection, sending periodic updates to its operator. Ronaldson, using Assassin as the model for his own intelligence-gathering tool, studied the leaked CIA documents and consulted with industry friends about how to make his own cyber-espionage weapon. Next week, nearly 16 months after he began the process, Ronaldson plans to unveil Operation Overwatch during a presentation at the 2019 […]

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Hard drives in accused CIA leaker’s case were ‘misplaced’ after jailhouse search, prosecutors say

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Months after the government accused a former CIA computer engineer of leaking government secrets from behind bars, prosecutors said hard drives containing discovery materials in the case somehow has been “misplaced.” The announcement is the latest complication in a case that only has become more convoluted since it entered the public consciousness. The government said it intends to provide the defendant, Joshua Schulte, with a reproduction of the unclassified material. Prosecutors have accused Schulte, a former software engineer, of providing WikiLeaks with an archive of stolen documents — known as the Vault 7 files — detailing the agency’s surveillance and hacking capabilities. In a Feb. 12 court filing, U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman told Judge Paul Crotty “the government has consulted with the [New York City’s Metropolitan Correctional Center, where Schulte is being held] and understand that the hard drives containing the defendant’s discovery were misplaced.” The government, as a result, said it plans to provide Schulte […]

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WikiLeaks is probably exaggerating what’s in its latest CIA leak

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WikiLeaks’ latest disclosure of secret CIA hacking capabilities, published March 31 as part of a package of documents dubbed “Marble,” describes how the spy agency obfuscates certain digital espionage techniques. The transparency organization is overselling what’s actually in the leaked computer code, experts say. The documents show that some hacking tools used by the CIA may have been constructed with code that contains foreign languages. It’s not uncommon nor out of scope for an intelligence service to design malware that can avoid detection, or to trick a target into believing a file is legitimate, according to Jake Williams, founder of Rendition InfoSec. “The news here is that the [CIA] does string obfuscation to keep their malware hidden from detection,” Williams said, “meaning they aren’t wasting your tax dollars.” The transparency organization led by Julian Assange has described the Marble library as “the digital equivalent of a specialized CIA tool to place covers over […]

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Legal peril looms over companies hoping to acquire CIA intel from WikiLeaks

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A cloud of uncertainty hangs over a cohort of private companies that hope to receive software vulnerability information from WikiLeaks, according to top national security lawyers. “The law is unsettled as to whether tech companies can receive stolen, classified information from WikiLeaks for the purpose of patching security vulnerabilities that the CIA has allegedly been exploiting,” said Edward McAndrew, a former federal cybercrime prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Offices for the Eastern District of Virginia. The transparency organization published thousands of internal, classified CIA documents two weeks ago in an effort to highlight apparent contradictions between how the U.S. government values digital espionage capabilities over the security and privacy of private technology companies. In a press conference live-streamed to Twitter on March 9, WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange claimed he would work with affected technology companies by privately providing them with executable code and other technical details that had been redacted from the […]

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